Lewis Beck's Mineralogy of New York stated the importance of New York State in the dawn of the American mineralogy. This book described in detail classic minerals and mineral localities from across the State, now defunct as mineral specimen producers. Later on, New York has become the place were ten new minerals for science and two others as second locations worldwide were described. The locality where the minerals were described for the first time is called type-locality and the second category is the co-type locality.

The history of the new mineral discovery started in 1838 when warwickite was found and continued with edenite in 1839 and clintonite in 1843. For many years after, no new minerals were added to the New York mineralogy until 1940 when manasseite was found at Amity in its co-type locality.

Another stage in New York mineralogical findings started with the description of geerite in 1980, followed by turneaurite (co-type) in 1983, donpecorite in 1984, and brewsterite-Ba in 1993. The last decade of the 20th century was rich in new mineral discoveries and fluoropargasite (2003), parvo-mangano-edenite, parvo-mangano-tremolite (2004), and fluoro-potassichastingsite (2005) were approved by the International Mineralogical Association - Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification. Still, New York State has the potential to add more new minerals to the world mineral list.